The not STFC Transfer Rumours thread

[Nemo]

To be fair, most of those are shit opinions rather than predictions.

[RobertT]

Mansfield only produce the basic accounts that Power used to for STFC and are part of an interwoven group, so getting any type of understanding of their finances is impossible.  They appear to run at 250k loss a year, but that could be under or over reported depending on how they move money between connected companies.

Gillingham make less money than we do, by a margin.  They ran at a loss of nearly 1m in 2021/22.  They did however have a massive revaluation of their property, which made their accounts look rather rosey (which I presume was ahead of the takeover deal - which was "lucky").

[Bob's Orange]

The club reinforced that we’ll have a competitive budget, early business and experienced signings so I can’t see us being skint.

Although whether the timing of those comments coinciding with the ST renewal window were purely coincidental or not can be left up to the cynic inside yourself.

On a serious note, my expectations for this upcoming season are as rock bottom as they’ve ever been. Of course the aim should be challenging for automatic promotion but at the minute I’ve got us down in the 11th-16th bracket so would take a pretty big car crash of a season to be further disappointed.

The game last night showed we currently have a squad of players that are currently reasonably set for league 2. If we were to add nobody, i'd guess a count of predictions would have us somewhere 16th-20th ish. The reality is now, that we probably need 5-6 players of decent quality in the spine of that side to make us properly competitive. We're now almost 4 weeks from the season kicking off and we haven't done nearly enough business to make a case for us to be promotion chasers/play-off chasers or also-rans. Who we bring in, to strengthen that spine will be crucial.

[Cowley38]

I was bored so I tallied up Cowley38's predictions. Here's what I found.

Things he's got wrong:

This one is ace, after England drew with Scotland in the World Cup... remind me how we did again?

Also he does not like Scott Twine one bit


Things he got right:

Yes you are sad, things change

The England stuff we were shite in the games leading  up to the comment.

Twine yes he signed for Burnley,  but has he been a regular?
I said he wasn't good enough fir a starting berth at that time........is he a starting player?

[Audrey]

Did anyone ever know where those Red Bull rumours came from?

[horlock07]

I know what you mean.  I have massively lowered by expectations which can be a bonus when something decent actually happens

I think most of us feel like that, however there are some of our fans who actively seem to vigorously knock one out over the idea it could all go tits up for some reason.

[UTR]

The game last night showed we currently have a squad of players that are currently reasonably set for league 2. If we were to add nobody, i'd guess a count of predictions would have us somewhere 16th-20th ish. The reality is now, that we probably need 5-6 players of decent quality in the spine of that side to make us properly competitive. We're now almost 4 weeks from the season kicking off and we haven't done nearly enough business to make a case for us to be promotion chasers/play-off chasers or also-rans. Who we bring in, to strengthen that spine will be crucial.

Agree with all of that. We still have the majority of the squad that contributed to one of our lowest ever finishes. New manager improvement or not, it’s a lot to ask them to improve enough to compete for promotion in what will be a much harder division, they’ll need those 5/6 quality players as you mentioned. All about what happens in the next few weeks before the season starts. The “ideal” plan would have been to get a few done early and then leave those real last touches of quality until late in the window where we know they’ll become available. Our business to date gives little confidence in that happening. If we’re waiting until after the season starts to get most of our business done and essentially sacrificing the first few games then it’s all a game of catch up.

Hoping I’m proved very wrong and we’ll get some quality come in over the next couple weeks.

[OOH! SHAUN TAYLOR]

The one straw of optimism I'm clutching at is that Charlie signed on for another season, which he wouldn't have done if he didn't think we would be competitive this season... would he???

[horlock07]

The one straw of optimism I'm clutching at is that Charlie signed on for another season, which he wouldn't have done if he didn't think we would be competitive this season... would he???

Ah but he doesn't know what the ITK posters know!

[Audrey]

I don’t think people are giving much credence to the changes a competent manager can bring. The young ‘uns all have a first season under their belts and should improve. We’ve potentially got the top striker in the league, Hutton who has the most assists for a ‘defender’ in Europe. I’ll be disappointed if we aren’t sniffing around or in the POs.

[Peter Venkman]

I’ll be disappointed if we aren’t sniffing around or in the POs.

I refer you to my previous post

I am in a perpetual state of disappointment when it comes to all things STFC related!

[ThreeDrawsMentality]

I don’t think people are giving much credence to the changes a competent manager can bring. The young ‘uns all have a first season under their belts and should improve. We’ve potentially got the top striker in the league, Hutton who has the most assists for a ‘defender’ in Europe. I’ll be disappointed if we aren’t sniffing around or in the POs.

Where my heads at too. There's a lot of potential in this squad that can be realised by potentially having a competent manager in Vs what we experienced under Lindsey and Morris last season.

[UTR]

Where my heads at too. There's a lot of potential in this squad that can be realised by potentially having a competent manager in Vs what we experienced under Lindsey and Morris last season.

I don’t mean to discount that, I’m just taking into account that the league is massively tougher next season. That sort of mentioned improvement could be enough to get this squad as it is challenging in a division of last seasons quality but to expect the level of improvement out of them to challenge in a harder division is a step unrealistic in my opinion.

[Audrey]

Truth of the matter is there are probably 12 teams looking at the 4 promotion slots. 8 will be disappointed.

For some reason - can’t think what - I don’t think good old Luke Warm will cut it in L2 with Notts County.

Anyway, it should be a cracker of a season - if we’re amongst it!

[horlock07]

Where my heads at too. There's a lot of potential in this squad that can be realised by potentially having a competent manager in Vs what we experienced under Lindsey and Morris last season.

I noted previously that it seems a little unfair to write off players based on last season considering the managers they were playing under, in many cases being played rarely, if ever, in positions which actually suited them.

TBH if you don't want disappointment the easy answer would be to go and support one of the big 6, something which I suspect would do wonders for the blood pressure of some of our fan base.